


Ashes, Ashes

by Hinn_Raven



Series: Donut Siblings [8]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Siblings, Family, Gen, Original Character(s), Running Away, RvB Angst War, Wash makes bad decisions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-04-18
Packaged: 2018-06-02 23:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6587488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wash shot Donut. Now he has to deal with the consequences. [Alternate ending to "We All Fall Down"]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes, Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saltsanford](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltsanford/gifts).



> Salt wanted to see the alternate ending to [We All Fall Down](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6511528). She requested: “Wash runs away after the events of “we all fall down” without telling anyone, and runs into trouble. Because apparently I wanna suffer (but no actual character death if that’s okay with you! I can’t handle Wash dying in this verse i juST CANT)” And I had fun with this! I drifted a bit from my original concept of how this fic would go, but I certainly had a fun time with it, and I hope you guys do too. 
> 
> Warnings for: Injury, violence, guns, attempted violence (I’m less sure of warnings here, please let me know if I need to add something.)

**This is true:** Tucker wakes up in the morning after the fight to an empty bed and the drawers that hold Wash’s shirts open. He nearly falls out of bed in his rush to check what’s missing. Clothes. Jeans. The gun he keeps on the underside of the bed. The photo on the fridge, of all of them together. One of the only real photos they have. The photo from the bedside, of him and Wash and Junior sitting on the hay wagon last fall is gone too.

 **This is true:** Mitch comes downstairs after a night of dreams of graves and gunshots, and she finds a note on the counter. The note just says _I’m sorry_. Mitch drops and runs out onto the porch, praying that, by some miracle, he’s still there, that she can stop him.

 **This is a lie:** Agent Washington shot Franklin Delano Donut in Valhalla all those years ago, and he’s never regretted it for a single moment.

“Wash!” Mitch yells. Her voice echoes back at her, and is answered by the animals, but not her brother.

Mitch runs to Tucker’s house, and meets him halfway.

“He’s gone?” Mitch asks. Tucker nods.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

Martha, Jackie, and Carolina arrive soon after. Martha looks pale as a ghost, but Mitch doesn’t have time to reassure her sister that it isn’t her fault, because a part of her thinks it might be.

Mitch might be furious at Wash, but a part of her thinks that Martha might have crossed a line. God knows Donut seems to think so, given that he’s refusing to look at any of them, instead looking to Carolina.

 _What happened to you?_ She doesn’t ask. _He shot you, and you nearly died, and you forgave him anyways, and then you lie to us about it?_

They pull up the map, and they all try to figure out where he would go.

The problem is, there’s nowhere else that he knows. Between all of them, there’s only a handful of years of Wash’s life unaccounted for, and they’re all spent in deep space or in basic training. He could be _anywhere_.

Mitch runs her fingers an inch above the holographic map, tracing the highways, and trying to figure out what Wash is thinking.

Her brother has never run from a fight. She doesn’t see why he ran from this. What was so terrifying of Martha’s wrath, of her own hollow anger, of Jackie’s tears?

Mitch remembers a conversation, almost a year ago, in the kitchen. Holding her brother’s hands so firmly that she thinks she might bruise them, reassuring him that he has a place here, that this is his home, that she wouldn’t turn him out.

Had he thought she’d change her mind? Had he run away before she could kick him out?

Mitch goes to the bathroom, leaving everyone else crowded around the map in the dining room, and she throws up in the sink, wondering what had she done to make him think that.

Maybe that was the wrong question.

What the _hell_ happened to her brother, that he could believe that she’d do that to him?

She stares out the window, looking out over her farm. Her home. Their home. Didn’t he see that without him, they would fall to pieces? Already shouts are coming from the dining, and she races out, because, _fuck_ —

“You have any idea how long it took us to get him to stop hating himself?” Tucker was yelling, up in Martha’s face. He’s shorter than Martha—the only one of the Reds and Blues besides Grif to have that distinction, but he seems larger, somehow.

Martha’s leaning away, not fighting back, not yelling. She hasn’t even called Tucker a single name, and _no_. Mitch isn’t handling this. One crisis at a time.

“Tucker!” She barks, in her best mom-voice. Wash had laughed the first time he’d heard it, telling her that she should have been the drill sergeant instead of him, because every spine in the room stiffens at the sound of it and turns to face her.

“This isn’t helping,” she says, trying not to think about her brother hating himself, even though that slots into place with the rest of the puzzle that is her brother’s traumas. And it certainly explains why he ran away.

She takes a breath. “He can’t get that far on foot. We need to get to the bus stations, he’ll probably try to get out of state that way.

“There’s five of them nearby,” Jackie says, highlighting them.

“Right,” Mitch says, closing her eyes, trying to _think_. “Grey, Grif, Doc, Simmons, Sarge. You guys go to the stations. If you see him, call, and then try to talk him down.”

“And the rest of us?” Carolina asks, and Mitch can’t help but think that the Freelancer is one wrong answer away from taking all the Reds and Blues and leaving. The green eyes are cold, accusing. _This is your fault_. Is the severity of injury different for all of these soldiers? Mitch wonders. Is nearly getting killed by your own brother simply an easy mistake, fixed with a quick apology?

Mitch has never been more aware of the fact that Carolina is Wash’s sister too, in some ways maybe even more than Mitch has a right to claim.

Mitch tries to clear her mind, tries to act as if this is a missing sheep or the cows being loose again. “We take two cars, go each way. Hope we find him.” She looks at Andi, and she says the words she doesn’t want to. “Can you call the hospitals, make sure no one of his description—”

“Got it,” Andi says, squeezing Mitch’s hand quickly.

“The hospital?” Donut finally speaks, looking at her, and if Carolina’s gaze was ice, her brother’s eyes were arctic.

Mitch looks right at him, even and in control, as if her mind isn’t whirling in a thousand directions, as if she wasn’t just puking in the sink. “You guys say he has terrible luck with cars,” she points out, and Grif and Simmons chuckle half-heartedly at that, and Mitch wonders if there’s a story there.

There are always so many _stories_. She’s never been more aware of it—she only knows about Chorus, she knows what Andi’s told her about Freelancer, but there’s so much they haven’t told her, and it’s causing this. Things are on the verge of falling to pieces, and Mitch doesn’t know what to _do_.

Carolina nods, and Mitch hopes that’s enough to salvage this; enough grounds to fix her family once they bring Wash _home_.

She goes to get the keys.

* * *

Carolina had a lot of thoughts when she learned that Wash had sisters.

The first thought was jealousy—jealousy that Wash had a family left, someone to go home to; jealousy that she wasn’t his only sister; jealousy that he hadn’t grown up alone.

After Chorus, after Epsilon, Carolina had left. She needed space. She needed to figure out who she was, now that there wasn’t Epsilon’s voice in the back of her head.

Wash had given her time. She’d visited cities and climbed mountains and travelled everywhere she’d even thought for a moment she’d wanted to visit, and then she kept going because she didn’t know how to stop.

And then Wash had called her and asked her to find Caboose. She’d brought him to Wash. She’d brought him to the farm. And she’d met the rest of Wash’s family.

The sisters were forces of nature, Carolina could remember thinking. Mitch had swept up the Reds and Blues into her family with open arms. Martha had offered Carolina a place of her own and a listening ear on nights when the silence in her head got too much.

Carolina had thought she could trust them with her family. She had thought they understood. 

But Wash is _gone_ , and it was because of them.

There is a tension in the air as Carolina went with Martha and Mitch to get the cars.

“You should stay behind,” Carolina says to Martha, harshly, but she doesn’t care, because she saw the bruise forming on Wash’s jaw last night, and although a part of her can’t help but whisper that Martha was justified in her rage, Wash is _missing_ , and Carolina can’t stop thinking about what happens to Wash whenever he’s alone.

Wash doesn’t do well alone.

“Carolina!” Mitch has that voice again; the one where she’s trying to reign in the worst of situations, the one that she uses to stop fighting. Carolina refuses to listen, because _no_. She’s not going to back down on this.

“Wash isn’t going to want to see her right now,” Carolina says flatly.

“Right now, finding him is the priority,” Mitch says. “We need everyone—”

“We’re going in three cars,” Carolina points out. “It’s not like she’ll make a difference.”

Mitch is furious, her eyes flashing in a way that heightens her resemblance to Wash.

“Stop,” Martha’s voice sounds hollow, and she grabs Mitch’s arm. “She’s right. I’ll stay back. Help with the kids. Charlie’s upset. I can—I can work with that.”

“Martha…”

Martha shakes her head, and Mitch walks away, heading for her truck.

Martha looks at Carolina. “Am I going to be hunting for a new roommate?” She asks, and Carolina pauses.

“I’m not sure.”

Martha nods. Carolina actually _looks_ , and sees that Martha’s eyes are red rimmed. Carolina wonders how much sleep she got last night.

Carolina doesn’t know what to think about Wash shooting Donut. It was all before she arrived; she’d come into their lives at a time when Donut was a past tense, and she’d met him maybe twice before Chorus. She hadn’t minded him, but she’d never really connected. He was… nice. Honestly, genuinely nice, and it was surprising. She hadn’t realized there were many people like that left.

Then Epsilon had called her, yelling, that Wash was having a panic attack, and she’d learned that Wash was Donut’s brother.

Family is important. Carolina knows this. She understands why they’re so upset that Wash shot Donut. She understands why they’re angry.

She shoves down everything, because she has to _prioritize_. Wash is gone. She’s going to find him, bring him home, and _then_ she can figure things out with Martha.

Martha walks away. Carolina ignores Mitch’s glare.

* * *

Lauren calls an official meeting in the hayloft.

They hayloft is _their_ place, without a doubt. There are two large banners, one for Red Team, one for Blue Team, the remnants of Lauren’s latest experiments in the corner, several desks piled high with school projects, a large pillow for the barn cats to nap on, and a large blackboard with their latest schemes written on it. At the moment, it’s a betting pool for Aunt Kai’s next visit.  

“What’s happening?” Lauren demands. “Report!”

Everyone looks at Junior.

“Uncle Wash wasn’t here this morning,” he admits, drooping. Charlie nods, clinging to Junior’s hand. Lauren can’t remember the last time she’s seen Charlie this upset, and she doesn’t like it one bit.

“That’s why they’re all leaving?” Joel asks, looking very concerned.

“They’re going to look for him,” Shannon says. “I heard Ma talking about it.”

“Carolina was fighting with your ma,” Lauren says, looking sick to her stomach. “And Aunt Martha.”

“Is this because of last night?” Joel asks. “But Mom said they were going to talk about it!”

“Uncle Wash had nightmares last night,” Charlie says, in her halting English. “Bad ones. He kept yelling about Uncle Donut.”

Lauren curls her hands into fists. “They’re not telling us _anything_!”

“Ma and Uncle Donut had a fight last night,” Shannon volunteers. “I was supposed to be asleep, but I woke up when Uncle Donut slammed the door.” She pauses, before adding. “Ma was crying.”

They all share horrified looks. Aunt Mitch doesn’t cry. Lauren wants to scream, wants to demand what’s going on, but the adults are racing around, and Lauren doesn’t think they’d notice even if she set the geese loose.

There’s a knock on the trap door. “Kids? You in there?”

It’s Aunt Martha. They all look at each other.

There’s a silent agreement between the adults and the kids; that the hayloft is _theirs_ , unless Aunt Mitch needs hay. For Aunt Martha to be here means something’s different.

They all nod in unison. Charlie pulls open the door.

Martha is standing on the ladder, and doesn’t come all the way in, instead propping her elbows on the floor, and looking at them with a sigh. “Jeeze, has anyone told you kids _anything_?”

Charlie’s the one to shake her head.

Martha groans. “Why am I having to be the responsible one? I’m going to have _words_ with your parents.”

She pauses, tilting her head. “They gone?”

Lauren nods. The last car—with Aunt Jackie behind the wheel, Lopez in the seat beside her, had just pulled out of the driveway.

“Great. C’mon kids, I’ve hooked the trailer up to the tractor. We’re going to find your dumbass uncle.”

“What’s the catch?” Joel demands, crossing his arms. He’s a suspicious character at heart. Lauren approves.

“You have to hug him a lot when we find him.”

The kids look at each other, and nod. “We can do that,” Lauren says.

“Great. Get your coats.”

* * *

Wash doesn’t know where he’s going.

He turns off the road eventually, after one close call too many, and he finds himself staring at a forest.

He remembers this place.

He doesn’t remember why.

It’s the worst part, sometimes, of being home. Most days, he holds on to the most important things—names faces, things about the house. But the further he gets away from the house, the blurrier things get, as if the house was somehow _safe_ , and the distance makes things less so.

He frowns, trying to remember as he ducks under the barbed wire fence.

He thinks… he came here after a fight. Something to do with blood.

The trees are mostly pine, and in such a straight line that they have to be planted artificially. Maybe this was once a Christmas tree farm, Wash thinks, pushing aside the spiky branches. He doesn’t know why he’s going here—he should be moving, trying to get as far away as possible, before the rest of his past spills out and he has to watch his sisters realize what, exactly, he’s become.

But it’s like the memories keep luring him in. He remembers running through here—although why he was running, he doesn’t know. 

He finds a path. It’s overgrown now, with thorn bushes and saplings and tall grasses that are already dying as fall begins to set in, but there are no pine trees here, and he keeps walking, away from the farm, pushed on by a need to _remember_.

Guided by the same instinct, he turns off the main path, and he stares as he realizes that someone—was it him?—has taken the branches of some of the few non-pine trees and the bushes, and twisted them together in order to form a sort of tunnel. It’s too short for Wash to walk through; he needs to stoop in order to get through.

On the other side, is a gigantic apple tree, standing in a perfect circle of clearing.

He knows this tree.

Why does he know this tree?

He moves forward, and he stares as he realizes that there are words carved into the side of the tree.

_David was here_

Wash doesn’t know how long he stands there, hand pressed over his old name. He falls asleep at some point.

_“What the hell is wrong with you?”_

_The gun goes off._

_Simmons armor falls, a bullet in the brain._

**_Bang_ ** _, the noise echoes off everything._

_Grif is bleeding out on the ground._

_He aims again._

_“Wash?”_

_Tucker doesn’t even scream as the bullet hits._

_It’s mechanical, he’s unfeeling, there’s just the gun in his hand, and that’s it._

_Caboose isn’t even wearing armor, the blood is everywhere._

_“You better aim true,” Sarge growls, and Wash doesn’t respond, just shoots._

_The gun goes off._

_A man in pink armor goes down, and Wash doesn’t care._

_“What are you doing?” Carolina has asked him this once before, and he had a good answer then, but this time, he doesn’t, and he pulls the trigger._

_Reload. Safety off. The anger is deep in his bones and there is a knot in his chest, and a need for revenge, a need to be **free**. _

_“David?”_

He spins, and raises the gun.

“Wash!” A hand grabs his wrist, and shoves it towards the sky, and the gun goes off, and Wash stares at Martha with wide eyes.

He drops the gun with horror. “Martha, I—”

Martha releases her grip on his wrist, and hugs him. “You _idiot_ ,” she whispers, and she’s shaking, oh god, she’s shaking. “What the hell are you doing, why do you have the gun out?”

“I—I don’t know. I was—” Lost.

Martha pulls back, and her grip on his arms is numbing. “Fuck,” she muttered.

“I—I nearly shot you,” he mutters, and he doesn’t understand how she can be standing here, how she hasn’t run away.

“Guess you have shitty aim,” she says. She pauses. “Well. You hit Frank. So I guess not that shitty.”

Wash reels at her words, and then realizes that it’s almost noon. It had been barely sunrise when he had arrived here. “How did you find me?”

She stares at him. “That’s a joke, right? You’d always come here after a fight.”

Wash recoils. He doesn’t—he doesn’t remember that.

“I—I didn’t—”

Martha frowns at him. “Wash, what’s happening?” She demands. “You don’t remember? You’d take me here when we were kids. It was our place to go after we got into fights. You never even brought the others here!”

Wash looks back at his name, scarred into the bark of the tree. On instinct, he moves slightly to the right.

Carved, lower than his name, is Martha’s name.

“I don’t—” He doesn’t remember.

Martha looks at him like she doesn’t know him. “So you just… happened to come here?”

“I… I knew I’d been here before. But that’s it.”

Martha frowns. “Is this what Carolina meant when she said your head was fucked up?”

Wash recoils. “She told—”

“She was drunk. She was mostly talking about how it was her fault. How she should have been able to stop it.”

Wash grimaces. “It’s not her fault.”

“That’s what I figured,” Martha says. She’s watching him.

“Where are the others?”

“Looking along the roads. I grabbed the tractor and came out.”

“They left you behind?”

Martha grins that bitter smile of hers with too many teeth. “Carolina’s not my biggest fan right now.”

Wash stares. “Martha—”

“Hey, she’s your sister too. She’s allowed to get mad at me when shit happens.”

Wash feels like there’s something heavy in his stomach. “I tried to shoot you,” he says again, and he looks at the gun lying at their feet.

Martha bends over, and picks up the gun. Her hands are firm as she holds it, and unloads it, separating the clip. She gives it to him, and tucks the gun into her waistband.

“When did you learn to do that?” Wash asks. There had never been guns in their house when they were kids.

“I nearly joined the army,” Martha says. “I picked up a few tricks.” She looks at him.

“I nearly _shot you_ ,” he says again, and he feels his breath beginning to shorten, and Martha’s eyes widen as she realizes what’s about to happen.

“David! I’m fine. Everyone’s fine. Take deep breaths. I will kick your ass if you make me drag you back to the tractor,” she says. “You have any idea how upset the kids will be?”

Shock more than anything stops Wash. “You brought the _kids_?”

Martha glares at him. “I wanted back up.”

“So you brought _the kids_?”

“It’s a fucking reminder,” Martha pokes him in the chest, hard. “The way I look at it, the asshole who shot his own brother for being in the way—” Wash flinches. “—he isn’t the same guy who lets his niece and nephew pretend to set him on fire by piling half the furniture on the house on top of him. He’s not the guy who brings home an alien kid because he doesn’t want to leave her to foster care. He’s not the guy who cheers stupidly loud at Junior’s basketball games.” Martha’s eyes are harsh. “Frank forgives too easily. We know that. But you’re family, and if you don’t think that trumps everything, you’re just fucking wrong.”

Wash looks at her. “I nearly _shot you_.”

“Oh my god, no wonder Frank forgave you if you were this pathetic.” She shoves him. “It was a PTSD thing and I snuck up on you. We’ll add it to the list of things you can talk to your therapist about.”

“I—”

“You are going _home_ , Mitch and Carolina are going to smother you in affection, Jackie’s going to fucking ship you to the best doctor she knows, and Tucker might actually strangle you.”

“I shot Donut!” He yells in confusion as his shorter sister keeps pushing him through the woods. He walks with her mostly to keep his balance.

“And we’re going to talk about that! At _home_!” Martha gives him one last shove, and Wash stumbles out of the woods.

“Uncle Wash!”

The kids surround him suddenly, and then Wash finds himself lifted into the air by Junior, loaded into the tractor trailer, and aggressively hugged the entire way home.

He looks at Martha over their heads, and he sees the way her mouth is a thin line.

Things aren’t fixed yet.

But he thinks they might get there.

**Author's Note:**

> NGL, was tempted to have Wash actually shoot Martha there. But I've promised Iz no trauma to the kids, so nope. Not gonna happen. 
> 
> Charlie and Lauren are usually only seen in "Good Luck, Charlie", but I wanted the kids to play a role, so they show up here this time. Thanks to Iz for letting me borrow them!


End file.
